Visit to Chita Summer 2018, No. 2 A beautiful day and a surprising visit
A quick note about yesterday and today.
Yesterday I was invited to Ksenia Shuvalova”s (“Ksyusha”) and her husband Dima’s dacha outside the village of Karpovka, 45 minutes from Chita, for a swim in the nearby lake, for mushrooming and for a grilled local pork dinner to go with the mushrooms. It was a beautiful clear day. The lake was plenty warm enough for swimming and lovely and clear. A lot of people were enjoying it along with us.
The warm lake near Karpovka village
From our resting spot we walked directly into groves of birch and there were mushrooms in abundance. The only one I felt qualified to identify was the “podberiozivik” or birch mushroom found under birch trees, and which were most prevalent. (There are now two more I feel confident about recognizing–”champignon” which are white with deep brown gills and a rich smell and a pinkish sturdy one with hairs around the edge of the cap, but the name didn’t stick with me…) A half hour moseying among the trees and we came back with two plastic shopping bags filled to the brim.
Vitaly hunting the wild mushroom!
Dima came back with this after 5 minutes checking out the birch grove for mushrooms. Almost all Podberiozivik, but with one of the pinkish hairy ones lurking in his left hand.
I helped Ksyusha clean a pile of them for dinner. Later, they gave the remainder—about half the haul!–to me and I just finished cleaning a 1/3 of that, frying them up in butter and scarfing them down. Wow. They don’t keep well at all so I’ll be eating a lot of mushrooms for the next 3 days!
My cleaning set up this evening at home.
The dinner was amazing, enjoyed on the porch of their dacha house in the sunset lighting of the clear evening and the temperatures falling quickly: thick pork steaks grilled and cut into pieces, a tomato,
Wild mushrooms sautéed in butter–a glutton’s delight.
cucumber, lettuce and bell pepper salad, the mushrooms and boiled new potatoes. The flies were atrocious, but a small price to pay for it all, and for the company.
At the end, Dima shared some of his “samagon” or home distilled spirits. Tonight it was his absinthe. My only contact with that is stories of turn of the century (20th that is) Paris and the artists and musicians drinking this in cafés as in the art of Toulouse-Lautrec. Its high alcohol content—73%–means it will ignite, and that is part of the way the drink is prepared. Dima put a half circle orange slice on a fork and dipped it in cinnamon sugar. Then he lit the absinthe, which was in a shot glass, and gently cooked the slice over the flame, caramelizing the sugar and infusing it with orange juice, all of which dripped into the liqueur. After about a minute or two of this, he smashed the orange slice on the side of another glass and poured the absinthe over it. The drink was consumed in a swallow and then a bite of the orange and its peel to follow. Of course I could feel it all the way down! It was warm and fierce and a wonderful flavor! Very exotic!
I had some samagon back in 1992, and last year I was given a gift of cedar infused spirits. I’m not much of a drinker, but appreciate the effort and enthusiasm. I know such home production is increasingly popular in the US, too.
Today I met Irina and Michael Shipley for the first time this trip. It was necessarily a short visit because I was scheduled later to meet a small group of Elena Pishcherskaya’s private English students. Lyosha and Vitya were there, two of the young men brought up in the Chernovsky Children’s Home and now out on their own that Irina especially mentors. Both of the have been written about in our newsletters. The Shipley’s daughter Katya was home from the US, though returning very soon and their young nephew was also there. It was a warm reunion around homemade pizza again!
To get to the selfish point here! Lyosha showed an interest in playing the Shipley’s piano last year and they arranged for piano lessons twice a week, which SB helps with financially. Irina has warned me that Lyosha had something special to show me.
Well, it knocked my socks off. He played the opening part of my own composition, “Carefree”! I played it in Chita back in 1995 and subsequently left its score at the Musical College. (I’ve played it ad nauseum since, because I haven’t written much of anything else!) It is not an easy piece and to see and hear what he was able to do with less that one year of experience on piano was stunning. And flattering. And odd, since I’ve never heard my own piano pieces played by anyone else before.
It happens that I taught the sister of his teacher and she copied the score and learned it herself. Lyosha is going to set up a meeting with the four of us. His teacher didn’t know about Lyosha’s connection to me until this spring, at which point she brought out the score and began to teach the beginning of the piece to him. Lyosha doesn’t yet read music, but his natural technique, his obvious intelligence, and his impressive ear, have, in less than two months, produced something very like the piece! Here is a quick embarrassing video that I forced him to allow—he wanted to be further along and more prepared.
Finally, the last event was tea, IN ENGLISH, CHILDREN!, with Vova and Kolya, 10 year old identical twins, Lisa, 8, Masha, 12, Elena’s son, Pasha, 9 and their beloved teacher, Elena herself. It was great fun. We told about ourselves, played two word games, ate too many sweets (Pasha made deep-fried fritters of summer squash that were terrific, and Elena said she didn’t help at all), and I generally enjoyed the raucous, nearly anarchic energy of these bright children.
After a walk home in the clear windy evening, I cleaned and ate those mushrooms, then sat down to write this account…which ends here.
